“As you say, your brother escaped justice once before. I remind you that it was your doing. He will know you saw him last night, and he may well attempt to play once more upon your sisterly affections. I want your promise that you will not attempt to warn Julius that we are hard upon his trail.”
She gripped my hand with a surprising firmness. “You have my word, Miss Speedwell.”
As our callers prepared to leave, I spoke again. “One thing more. Stoker is correct that Julius may be nursing a grudge. And any man who would commit arson is an estimable foe. It might be best for your own safety to go to a friend’s house to stay for a few days.”
Eliza gaped at me and began to protest, but Undine proved a sudden and stalwart ally. “Parthenope. We shall go to Miss Fleet and ask her to shelter us until this madness is over.”
Eliza considered this a moment, then gave a nod. “Very well. We shall go to Miss Fleet.”
She took Undine’s hand then, tucking it firmly under her arm as they descended the stairs to take their leave of the Belvedere. Stoker’s innate courtesy would have dictated he show them out, but I put a hand to his sleeve to stay him.
“Let them go,” I said. “They will be halfway down Marylebone High Street by now, and they will not thank you for giving chase.”
“I suppose,” he grumbled. “But I do not feel at all good about frightening that poor woman to death. Did you see her pallor? I’ve known jellyfish with better colour.”
“It will do her no harm to be forewarned,” I said, pouring another cup of tea. “She is the obvious target for Julius Elyot’s vengeance if he has returned, and if she does not prepare herself for that, the consequences might be disastrous for her—perhaps even fatal.”
In the end, I was mistaken. Eliza Elyot was not, in fact, the target of Julius’ vengeance. But the next day brought news of an unexpected death just the same.
CHAPTER
21
The next morning I woke later than is my habit, taking my time over my toilette and lingering over a leisurely breakfast. I planned an entire programme of hard work for the day, intending to apply myself with diligence to the cataloguing of a new collection ofHyalophora cecropia, comely moths from North America recently acquired by Lord Rosemorran. Moths are not, as a rule, my favourite, but these were enormous creatures, seven inches at the wingspan, and beautifully coloured with crimson bodies and dark wings banded in white and khaki. I had only rarely seen such moths, and never of such variety and quality as these. I spent the day amongst them, the hours flying past as they did when I was so happily engaged. After dinner, I had just settled to finish painting my swallowtail illustration when Stoker appeared, pale under his tan and brandishing the evening edition of theDaily Harbinger.
“Have you gone off theTimes?” I teased gently. “I seem to recall you saying it was the only fit newspaper for a gentleman to read after teatime.”
To my surprise, he did not respond to my raillery. Instead, he thrust the newspaper under my nose. It took me a long moment tocomprehend the implications of the headline, and another to skim the accompanying article.
peer’s brother found dead in train compartment
“Oh,no,” I breathed. I took the newspaper from him, reading the article a second time. It carried scant details, only informing the public in a rather breathless tone that Lord Ambrose Despard, the younger brother of the Marquess of Harwich, had died en route to Southampton where he had intended to board a ship for New York. He had been travelling alone in a first-class compartment and had apparently died of natural causes.
“Natural causes!” I rattled the paper in indignation. “They cannot be serious.”
His expression was almost pitying. “You have become familiar enough with the ways of aristocracy to understand what is happening.”
I blinked. “You mean they are covering this up?”
“Of course they are,” he assured me. “It is the way of things for the great and good.”
“And it requires no great leap of imagination to suppose who might have been responsible,” I said.
He nodded grimly. “Julius Elyot.”
“Ambrose Despard knew Elyot was alive—that much is proven by Elyot’s use of his carriage. And it is likely Despard gave him a place to stay, perhaps even in his own house,” I mused.
“My god, what fools we were! We ought to have gone straight to Despard’s and confronted him as soon as Eliza left us yesterday.”
“But using Despard’s carriage suggests relations were cordial between the two men. How could they have fallen out so badly in less than twenty-four hours?” I asked.
“I can think of forty different reasons,” Stoker said, bitterness limning his voice. “Not least of which is that Elyot is clearly in the grip of lunacy.”
“If he has returned for the Beauty, perhaps he thought Despard knew something of her whereabouts and was concealing them,” I suggested. “Or maybe it’s to do with Eliza.” I read the brief notice again. “How might Elyot have done it? It couldn’t have been a bloody enterprise, or it would have been too difficult to conceal the matter.”
Stoker shrugged. “The heir to the Austrian throne managed to murder his mistress by gunshot before taking his own life in January, but did you ever see a photograph of the hunting lodge where it happened? A sensational story in the newspapers? No, they concealed it as far as they were able.” I had to concede the point. When the news of Crown Prince Rudolf’s death finally broke, court authorities insisted he died of heart failure and didn’t even mention the unfortunate girl who had died at his side, not even as a footnote. It was weeks before the whispers started and even longer before the truth was known. It had been nearly a year and still no one knew the full story of what happened at Mayerling.
“Yet Lord Ambrose did not murder anyone, so there is no sordid story for the Marquess of Harwich to cover up. And the Despards are hardly Hapsburgs,” I pointed out.